For vector art (or skeletal animation of images), has anyone had any luck with Anime Studio, Spriter, or other bone-animation software?

I'm experimenting with skeletal animation now, though I'm not sure if I'll scan and color hand-drawn art or draw vector art. (And, yes, I'm reminding myself not to get too ambitious until I've had a few small games under my belt.)

I found a FANTASTIC program for creating Pixel (and other) art. This program can run in-browser and be dowloaded, with same functionality. It supports layers, as well as darkening/lightening pixels with a touch, and most importantly, it has very good handeling of frames, with exports as on PNG with frames side-by-side, an animated GIF, or each in its own image with a numbered index.

I used to create designs with Pixlr Editor. It's a website meaning for as long as you have a good connection you can access it. Right now I'm using either Gimp or CS5. Its not a big jump but it's definitely more complicated than Pixlr.

For pixel art, I suggest you look at GFIE: greenfish icon editor. It was designed for making pointers and other small icons, so it works really well with low resolution pixel graphics. (My favorite picture that I have made is probably my avatar.)

It supports layering, animations, several types of texturing, and pretty much all other basic functions. (And it's free.)